How to love the skin you're in....

Do you want clean, smooth, blemish free skin? How about no wrinkles? Well, here is a basic cleaning regime that you can tailor to your personal needs. Everyone needs to have a good regime, even if you don't ever get break outs. Washing your face makes your skin healthy and have a better chance at looking younger and fresher in your later years.

1. Always wash your face at night and in the morning.

In the morning:

1. Use a gentle face wash to clean off all the product that you put on the night before. Also, you don't want to use too harsh of a face wash either. In the morning I use Spectro Gel face wash for oily/normal skin. You can also buy it in other formulas so pick which one fits your skin type best.
2. Always use moisturizer! Even if you have oily skin you must lock in moisturizer or else your skin will over-compensate by producing more oil. Again, pick something that matches your skin type. I use Vichy ProMat moisturizing creme.

Night Time:
1. Wash your face with a cleanser that matches your skin type. I use Neutrogena Oil Free Acne Wash.

2. Tone. My absolute favourite toner is ROC 2 in 1. It is a creme toner that gets rid of all the makeup that your cleanser couldn't remove and you can even use it on your sensitive eye area! Fantastic!
If you have oily skin you can skip a toner but I suggest using a creme toner with some moisturizer in it. Again, an alcohol base toner will rid the skin of sebum and dry it out so that your pores start to excrete more oil.
If you have dry skin, I would also suggest using a creme toner to add moisture to the skin.
If you are worried about wrinkles or dull skin, I would try something with Glycolic Acid in it which helps rejuvenate the skin. You can get toners with 5-10% Glycolic acid so pick the percentage based on your skin type. 5% for sensitive and up from there and 10% for non-sensitive. Or, just to be safe, 8% is a good amount of Glycolic acid concentration.

3. Apply your serum. The serum is specifically formulated to help with your skin problem whether it is large pores, acne, or wrinkles. Put this on first as it is highly concentrated and you want to make sure it goes on to the areas you are concerned with the most. Make sure to stay away from the sensitive eye area. I currently am using Defrin which is a prescription acne drug so I put that on before my moisturizer. Note: This does NOT include spot treatment for acne.

4. About 5-10 minutes after applying the serum, apply your moisturizer to seal in the serum. Make sure to stay away from the sensitive eye area.

5. Then apply eye serum and spot treatments like Spectro Acne Care vanishing Lotion.


What else:
Every two days, exfoliate your skin. Exfoliation rids the skin of dead skin cells and makes your skin look more radiant, as well as, gets rid of skin cells that may clog pores and cause breakouts. I use Vichy Normaderm Scrub every time I have a shower. The shower is a great place to exfoliate because your skin is soft and supple from the steam and it lets the product really work deep in to pores to rid them of dirt. Also, since I'm in the shower I can scrub my neck area and hair line without worrying about scrubbing beads getting stuck in my hair--instead, it easily rinses away!

At least once a week, use a facial mask. For oily skin use a clay mask, for other skin types use a peel off mask.